Welcome back to the Odyssey, where the weather’s unseasonably warm, the kids are wrapping up their second week of winter vacation, and the loaner cat is his usual mixture of crusty and cranky (“crustanky”?).
The kids have been on vacation since back when I could still tolerate hearing “Gangnam Style” without screwing up my eyes, clamping my hands onto my ears, and running screaming from the room while making obnoxious “la la la la la” sounds. Oddly enough, the kids’ tolerance shows no such signs of waning, and mechanized Korean rapping is still popping up at ever-more-regular intervals in what I’ll malapropically declare to be our ever-more-smaller apartment. Who knew that Kristanne could rap in Korean?
One of the nice things about the kids being on vacation is that the weekends have been mercifully free from the usual overwhelming crush of French athletics. Between Kinsey’s basketball, Quinn’s baseball and fencing, and my deepening jorkyball addiction, Saturdays and Sunday can fill rapidly. But, in usual French “All Together Now” fashion, when the kids are on vacation, everyone’s on vacation, including sports teams, French language class instructors, and the precisely dressed old people in our neighborhood who seem to do nothing but walk their dogs 12 times a day with jauntily deployed baguettes under their arms. Apparently, they’re on the payroll, too.
happiness is a plate of shellfish
So, with the blank canvas of an open weekend spreading itself before us, the Heaton Family Painters set out for the fair city of Lyon to craft their masterpiece (Kristanne), leave their graffiti spray (the kids), or dribble their nonsensical Rorschachian ink blots (yours truly). The main thing was to get out there in the world and paint. And, yes, tortured metaphors are indeed a hobby. Trust me, you’ll be looking back at this paragraph fondly in about 2,000 words when I eventually switch to Korean rapping.